


Smoke and Mirrors

by Prettygirlgraves



Series: Regalbeliever Oneshots [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Oneshot, Other, Regina as a smoker, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 07:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9982754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettygirlgraves/pseuds/Prettygirlgraves
Summary: Oneshot between Regina and Henry, set pre-show start date, around 1 month before Emma comes to town.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! This is another RegalBeliever oneshot for you all, I'm hoping to add other ones to this series when I have the time. I hope you all enjoy it! Please leave a comment/ review.

She liked the way the smoke curled in gentle waves, giving her surroundings a soft, blurry haze as she took another puff of the cigarette in her hand. Inhale. Exhale. It was numbing in a nice way; the sharp pain in her heart replaced by the smell of the nicotine scented smoke that mingled with her stale perfume.

She only smoked when Henry wasn't in the house. She definitely didn't want him to know about her darker habits, her...addiction, whatever it should be referred to as. It would just be yet another reason for him to call her a terrible mother. 

Evil. 

That damned book. She thought she should be used to it by now; she was the one who chose the prefix to her Queenly moniker, but it still hurt like a knife was being twisted in her heart every time she heard that word cruelly slip out of her boy's lips. His lips. Those baby pink lips that once smiled so brightly when they said her name now held a cruel snarl, each word spoken attacking the few loving memories that remained. 

Speaking of memories, the smoke itself reminded her of the curse; the way the smoke enveloped the enchanted forest; a flash of emerald amidst the purple clouds. She smiled faintly, remembering an echo of the hope and joy she had had when she thought she'd won. If only she knew how far winning would get her. She had a son, but not really. The only thing she'd gained was an addiction to smoking, one thing in this world that the enchanted forest didn't have to corrupt herself that little bit further.

She tapped the ashes, allowing the flecks from it to float away into the wind along with her cares and troubles. The wind whipped at her hair and her coat, but the cold wasn't the thing to bother her, not anymore; she'd been too numb, too frozen for years. It wasn't the sort of affliction that meant much in the grand scheme of things; she had felt much worse pain. 

'Mom?' 

She suddenly heard that familiar high pitched voice of her child, interrupting her thoughts. She looked up, taking a sharp intake of breath at the sight of his face; it was shocked; his mouth hung open, slack, his eyes focused on the cigarette she held between two fingers. Her chest tightened painfully. No.

Her automatic response was to get rid of the evidence. She stubbed out the cigarette with one quick gesture, hurling it to the floor and grinding it into the ground with the base of her shoe. It was too late though, she knew she had been caught. All she could do now was wait. 

'You smoke.' 

A surly expression of hate flashed across his features. Her heart throbbed and there was the knife again. Not again. Not now. Please. 

'Henry, I-' but there was no point trying to assuage her guilt in his eyes, and her voice trailed off into the blustery air. Anything she said would be empty words, lies, and she was so damn tired of telling lies to her son. 

'It's not good for you, you know,' he muttered, scuffing his shoe into the dirty soiled ground. She had to refrain herself from snapping at him to stop mucking up his new shoes, but she stopped herself in momentary surprise. Where were the insults? Where were the cruel words to which she had become so accustomed to recently?

'Yes, I read that somewhere.' She said, her eyes constantly flicking to Henry's then to her lined hands in anxiety

'So why'd you do it?' He asked, an expression of curiosity etched into his features. He looked younger, more innocent without the hatred bubbling over. It was a sight Regina hadn't believed she'd see again. 

'I don't know,' she replied just loud enough for him to hear, but most of the sound was caught by the wind, making her utterance little more than a fragile whisper. 

'Why don't you stop then?'

She sighed, her hands clasped tightly to one another in attempt to keep her grounded. "I...it's numbing,' she relented after a moment of painful silence. Her voice however, was softly affectionate, and there was a ghost of a smile on her lips as she realized she was having an actual conversation with her son that wasn't some kind of anger infused argument. 

She didn't know why the mask was suddenly refusing to slip back up, but she felt her true face, her face that was lined with aged pain return to the surface. It hadn't felt the air for such a long time, at least not when others were present. She flinched suddenly in anxiety, but allowed herself to sit with shoulders hunched, surrounded by the memories of her past that were normally pushed so far back into the recesses of her mind they were painful to reach.

She noted Henry watching her, and saw a range of emotions flit across his face: anger, fear, confusion, and a new one- anxiety.

'What's wrong?' He asked suddenly, as if he had just realized there was a human inside this shell of his mother, and that maybe, just maybe this facade he saw was just that, a facade. 

She felt a flicker of the mask return, and her features harden slightly at his question. She ground her teeth together slowly, trying to control her words. She had to be careful, calm, controlled, a responsible mother. She couldn't do this, not to Henry. It wasn't his burden to bear. 

'Nothing, nothing at all.' She smiled as brightly as she could muster, but it felt wrong, all wrong. 

She knew he saw her lie for what it was, and his face wrinkled in confusion. Before he could respond, she cut in, attempting to snap the mask back up onto her unwilling features. 

'Come inside Henry you'll catch your death out in this cold,' she said, her voice louder, sterner, controlled. Mask back up. 

His face had changed too. It wasn't pure hatred, it never was, but there was more curiosity mingled with it now. She wondered how long it would last.

They were half way to the door when he spoke again, urgently now, as if he had realized this may be the last time he would have a chance to get through to her. 

'You'll stop won't you?'

'What?' She responded absently, her hand now coming to rest on the door handle as she tilted her face towards his in question.

'Smoking. It's not good for you, mom.' 

There's the word. The word she hadn't heard for at least a month. It was so unexpected, her hand subconsciously reached to her heart. Her hands were shaking, and clutched at her chest almost as an attempt to stop the pain that those words caused her. 

'Mom.'

'Yes of course Henry,' she replied with a soft smile, perhaps one of the last honest thing she would say to her boy until the infamous curse was broken, not that she herself knew that. 

'Good.' He responded with a smile. It wasn't a full smile, but it was there, and that was enough to warm her heart for just a few hours. But that was all she needed, at least to get her through the day. 

She steadied her breath as she watched him run up the stairs to his room, and headed to her own office down the hall, still wondering with painful hope when they would become a family once more.


End file.
